Eros at the Train Station by Alessandra Bava

Loneliness, by Paul Delvaux, 1956.

Eros at the Train Station
 
There are trains at night stopping at stations, abandoned by switching yards, immersed in a deafening silence. Nobody listens to them but me. I am standing on the platform wearing a red coat, naked as a skeleton underneath. A solitary “Nude Bathing in the Moonlight,” awaiting a lover who never arrives on time.
 
The station-master’s home is all lit up, the moon is a tightrope walker on the cable, and I keep lying to myself.  Maybe Love has fallen asleep in one of the carriages. From the poles shadows fall in lines. I roll them up as a ball of wool and knit myself a warm gray heart.
 
Eros has deserted me, one more time, tonight.

Alessandra Bava

Alessandra Bava is a poet and a translator living in the Eternal city. She is the author of 4 chapbooks: Guerrilla Blues, Nocturne, They Talk About Death and Diagnosis. Her poems and translations have appeared in Gargoyle, Plath Profiles, THRUSH and Waxwing, among others. She has a new chapbook coming out from dancing girl press as well as her first poetry collection in Italian later this year all while she keeps working on the biography of a contemporary American poet.